Freedom City Campaign [M&M2] - OOC Discussion

[DM_Matt]

[sblock=DM_Matt please read]Wow. To run the first round of combat, I had to go through Power Surge again to figure out his powers, and man, is he abusive. I guess I didn't have time to go through it the first time. Is there a power he doesn't have? And I have to think about some of the flaws you took. For example, Requires Concentration check DC 20 assumes there's a reasonable chance you can fail the check. You've got a +17!!! to Concentration! AND he has a feat that lets him re-roll a failed Concentration check! That means on average you have a 7.5% chance to fail a Concentration check. That's not exactly a reasonable chance to fail (which I'd place at 25% chance or higher to get the flaw). And you took full power on just about everything!

Also, you've got some things listed for Power Surge that I can't find in either the main M&M book or Ultimate Power, such as the Conscious extra or the Distracting flaw. As stated in the initial post of the OOC thread, you can only use things from M&M or Ultimate Power.

I'm going to look through Power Surge again when I have a chance, but I'm currently of the belief that he is vastly overpowered. Not overpowered in terms of his damage bonus or anything, but he can do everything. I prefer characters to have a defined scope of powers, not every power in the book with a bunch of meaningless flaws.

Think of the superheroes that appear in comics. They tend to have 3-5 defined powers which all sort of work together. Even characters with lots of powers, such as Iron Man, they are all based on being in the power suit, and even he doesn't have wierd stuff like Mind Control and Insubstantial.

I don't mean to be harsh, but I just have an uneasy feeling about this character's really wide range of abilities, and my guess is that there are probably several places where the character design is trying to take advantage of a loophole or otherwise skirting the spirit of the rules.[/sblock]

[sblock] Ill wirte more later, but Distracting is in the main book. Surge loses his dodge bonus when using it. The conscious extra I believe is in the main book, too, if not UP. It is specific to mind control. It allows me/them to access their mind/memory. He has mind control primarily as an interrogation tool. More like Wonder Woman's lasso than Professor X. He was thinking of using it this round only if they were immune to all his other abilities. I'd gladly up its action to two rounds or something to make it useless in combat, though.

Regarding concentration, his backstory is heavy with the perseverance/dedication angle and he controls his powers through his mind, so he has a bunch of points invested in being a great concentrator (maxed concentration, second chance, wisdom), AND his powers often similarly require it, although really is is only some configurations of the same array. Removing Second Chance can help here I suppose though.

Similarly, he has full power on all his attacks because his attack powers in that array all work at full power, but since there are parts of the array that it cannot apply to, it has to be applied to each one. If the attacks are conceptualized priarily as bullets, rockets, and grenades, it doesn't make sense to me for the pulling punches option to be available. If anything, it is a much bigger drawback to have it on all settings than fewer, since in the situations where pulling punches could somehow be desirable he could just switch to the setting that does not have full power for that time. In this case, he can't pull his punches with his attacks at all.

With an eye towards reducing versatility, it may help to get rid of Animate Machines. Most of its more appropriate uses (controlling cars, etc) can be done with his other powers, and it has the additional effect of creating custom minions.

By insubstantial, I assume you mean concealment? It makes sense for a guy built for black ops with super-tech to have that. He is not a power suit, but like power suits, his internal features are designed to set him up to be good at a particular role. I don't think he can do EVERYTHING. He can, however, do the things that are required if one were to have to infiltrate an enemy base, office building, or wilderness encampment, retrieve/sabotage/rescue/kill/whatever something, and get out alive. Of course, typical superhero missions and typical blackops commando misisons have a lot in common, but his powers are largely limited to being a strong, sneaky fighter and hacker.

BTW, this is probably a bad time to point this out, but his SAW ability is a Shapable Targeted Area attack, as per UP. It attacks targets up to (rank) adjacent squares, so it can hit all three bad guys. Also, all my action options I think included activating invis (its a free action, and may have consequences regarding enemy defense, and thus also autofire), and I think he can only make a 5-foot step with a full round action, which the SAW is, not a 15 foot.
[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

[sblock]
BTW, this is probably a bad time to point this out, but his SAW ability is a Shapable Targeted Area attack, as per UP. It attacks targets up to (rank) adjacent squares, so it can hit all three bad guys. Also, all my action options I think included activating invis (its a free action, and may have consequences regarding enemy defense, and thus also autofire), and I think he can only make a 5-foot step with a full round action, which the SAW is, not a 15 foot.
[/sblock]

[sblock]I tried to take shapable in my original build for Entrapper. When Insight got done it had disappeared. I might not hold your breath for that one. Of course, it may have been an entangle specific issue.
And, practically speaking, its a bit aggravating for the DM to constantly have to put the targets down on a gird, count the squares between them and then explain the configuration to the player.[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

Just FYI: My entangle is actually "affects corporeal". Since the entrappers abilities work even if he goes intangible (i.e. his entangle is thrown grenades, as soon as it leaves is hand stuff returns to substantiality). I think that they'd have to be bought separately.

Since he missed it doesn't matter of course.

 

[Insight]

[sblock] Ill wirte more later, but Distracting is in the main book. Surge loses his dodge bonus when using it. The conscious extra I believe is in the main book, too, if not UP. It is specific to mind control. It allows me/them to access their mind/memory. He has mind control primarily as an interrogation tool. More like Wonder Woman's lasso than Professor X. He was thinking of using it this round only if they were immune to all his other abilities. I'd gladly up its action to two rounds or something to make it useless in combat, though.

Regarding concentration, his backstory is heavy with the perseverance/dedication angle and he controls his powers through his mind, so he has a bunch of points invested in being a great concentrator (maxed concentration, second chance, wisdom), AND his powers often similarly require it, although really is is only some configurations of the same array. Removing Second Chance can help here I suppose though.

Similarly, he has full power on all his attacks because his attack powers in that array all work at full power, but since there are parts of the array that it cannot apply to, it has to be applied to each one. If the attacks are conceptualized priarily as bullets, rockets, and grenades, it doesn't make sense to me for the pulling punches option to be available. If anything, it is a much bigger drawback to have it on all settings than fewer, since in the situations where pulling punches could somehow be desirable he could just switch to the setting that does not have full power for that time. In this case, he can't pull his punches with his attacks at all.

With an eye towards reducing versatility, it may help to get rid of Animate Machines. Most of its more appropriate uses (controlling cars, etc) can be done with his other powers, and it has the additional effect of creating custom minions.

By insubstantial, I assume you mean concealment? It makes sense for a guy built for black ops with super-tech to have that. He is not a power suit, but like power suits, his internal features are designed to set him up to be good at a particular role. I don't think he can do EVERYTHING. He can, however, do the things that are required if one were to have to infiltrate an enemy base, office building, or wilderness encampment, retrieve/sabotage/rescue/kill/whatever something, and get out alive. Of course, typical superhero missions and typical blackops commando misisons have a lot in common, but his powers are largely limited to being a strong, sneaky fighter and hacker.

BTW, this is probably a bad time to point this out, but his SAW ability is a Shapable Targeted Area attack, as per UP. It attacks targets up to (rank) adjacent squares, so it can hit all three bad guys. Also, all my action options I think included activating invis (its a free action, and may have consequences regarding enemy defense, and thus also autofire), and I think he can only make a 5-foot step with a full round action, which the SAW is, not a 15 foot.
[/sblock]

Per the book, you can't use shapeable and full power for an area attack, so you have to pick one or the other.

 

[Insight]

I'm going to be at Origins starting Wednesday, July 4, and won't be posting again until 7-11.

 

[Graf]

Have fun at origins!

Thread shifted since this is OOC

OOC: Are you actually going to take an action or is that it?

Sorry. My other character is in a Call of Cthulhu game. I think it rubbed off.

 

[Insight]

I'm back from Origins. Still need an action from Power Surge and we can continue. I'd like to get the next round posted by Tuesday evening.

 

[hero4hire]

I'm back from Origins. Still need an action from Power Surge and we can continue. I'd like to get the next round posted by Tuesday evening.

How was Origins? I went a couple years ago and had a blast.

any M&M stuff going on?

 

[Insight]

How was Origins? I went a couple years ago and had a blast.

any M&M stuff going on?

Yes, there was quite a bit of M&M at Origins this year. In addition to the two games I ran, there were at least two more that I know of. Steve Kenson was there at Origins, but I don't think he ran any demos this year (correct me if I'm wrong).

I played quite a bit of Living Spycraft this year, and I'm starting to really like that system and "living" campaign.

 

[DM_Matt]

Per the book, you can't use shapeable and full power for an area attack, so you have to pick one or the other.

If thats how you are going to do it, I'll ditch full power and one rank, and add incurable with the extra point.

However, I would argue that what the book says is that you cannot reduce the area because you cannot reduce ranks, and I recall that you cannot have the selective extra, although I haven't been able to find it in the book. Shapable Targeted Area is different from selective in that with selective, you can choose to not affect some in the area, thus pulling your punches on them, whereas STA involves making an attack roll and having the areas be rank number of adjacent squares. It would seem that Full Power with STA would require you to fire into rank number of spaces, which sometimes is a problem, if there are not that many spaces you can attack without hitting your friends. In some cases, the extra bullets just spray the scenery, while in others, such a small room, unlike with selective,you have to attack your friends. This seems to be a more common and dangerous issue than most instances of full power.